Unemployment benefit extension welcomed

Republican photo\ MIEKE ZUIDERWEG Jessica A. Roberts of Chicopee, who lost her job in May, works on her resume at Holyoke's CareerPoint office today.

By JIM KINNEY
Business writer

HOLYOKE - Jessica A. Roberts of Chicopee makes the three job-search contacts each week she needs to keep her $345-a-week unemployment check coming.

"I'm sick of looking for a job," said Roberts, 32, today after brushing up her resume on a computer in the resource library of CareerPoint, the city's one-stop career center.

Roberts was laid off from her data-entry job in March. She is in her 14th week of receiving unemployment benefits. Her rent alone is $605 a month.

She is planning to go back to school and learn to be a fitness instructor. She also wants to take the civil service examination at the Postal Service.

If Roberts and others like her have any good news, it is that the government has extended unemployment benefits across the country to 39 weeks.

In Massachusetts, that is nine weeks longer than people were previously eligible to receive benefits, said David C. Gadaire, the executive director of CareerPoint.

The maximum unemployment benefit is $600 a week, and the minimum is $39 a week, he said.

Most states offered just 26 weeks of unemployment before the new federal rules, passed this week as part of a spending bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, took effect.

"Given the economy and given the frustration that we're seeing on a daily basis, this has to help," Gadaire said.

Nationally, employers cut payrolls by 62,000 jobs in June, the sixth straight month of nationwide job losses, according to The Associated Press.

The national unemployment rate held steady last month at 5.5 percent.

In the Bay State, the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent in May, up from 3.9 percent in April. For the Pioneer Valley, the unemployment rate was 5.2 percent up from 4.4 percent in April.

The state has not released numbers for June.

Frank L. Cropanese, 56, of Springfield was filing his application for unemployment yesterday. He lost his job maintaining and repairing ATMs when a contract ended.

"I'll just hang in there," he said. "Somebody has to do the work."

Joseph P. Walsh, director of policy and planning for the state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, said this week that the state will start sending letters to 95,000 unemployed people who may qualify for the benefit.

"We are encouraging people to wait for the eligibility letter because that will have a lot more information for them," he said.

Rexene A. Picard, the executive director of FutureWorks in Springfield, said she expects the office to be busy on Monday because most recipients will have received the word by then.